


Magpie

by a_sparrows_fall



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Animal Death, Blood Drinking, Children, Coming of Age, Deleted Scenes, First Kiss, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy (pre-slash), Infant Death, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 06:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12500572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall
Summary: “It is a bad path to tread, Emiel,” he says, a warning. “Fighting other vampires. No matter what you think they deserve.”A vignette of Regis and Dettlaff in their younger years.





	Magpie

**Author's Note:**

> **Author’s note: Trigger warning for dead animals and an infant in peril. It does not get eaten by the ~~eels~~ vampires at this time, but tread with caution if babies in danger squick you.**  
> 
> Basically, this is a fic about young vampires. You’ve been warned.
> 
> For purposes of this fic, I'm imagining Regis as being the vampire equivalent of 16 years old, and Dettlaff being around 19.
> 
> Thank you [Dordean](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dordean/pseuds/Dordean) for the read-through. As always, your opinion is highly valued! :)

_887_

"Drink it!”

“YOU drink it!”

“C'mon! OooOOooh—"

"You _know_ you want to put it in your mouth—"

"—STOP it!—"

"DRINK - IT! DRINK - IT! DRINK - IT!"

Laughter, chanting, a rustle of fabric as someone struggles out of someone else's grasp, trying to wriggle out of doing something they clearly don't want to do.

And of course, there's the _smell_ of it.

He halts before he reaches the field, peeking around a pine tree and seeing their silhouettes in the moonlight.

The boys stand roughly in a circle at the top of the hill. The one protesting, writhing in the others’ judgment, looks like Markus; he can’t make anyone else out at a glance, but he can guess who they are.

He can also guess what they have in their hands, are shoving back and forth between them, making them simultaneously titillated and terrified.

It's an ill night for a walk, apparently.

But he can't go back home. It… His father—

It won't be over for hours yet.

He draws in his brows, assessing the situation, pressing the tip of his tongue into his left upper canine. A nervous habit; it’s been two years since his fangs started coming in, and the left one is _still_ not quite as long as the right.

 _Keep walking_. He has to. Only thing for it now. Mist form would attract too much attention, and running would be even worse. They almost certainly already know he's there, but if he can just keep moving, remain calm, disinterested, maybe they won't—

"Emiel!"

He freezes. 

_Shit_.

“Come over here, Emiel.”

Daimiano’s looking at him with unconcealed excitement, his voice honeyed poison. The other boys hadn’t seen him, but they are turning now, the entire circle of them. They look relieved. And why shouldn’t they? He’s a distraction. Fresh meat.

Only Leonidas reserves some of his attention for the barely stirring thing in his hands.

Emiel pulls his tongue back from his tooth, pinches his lips together, and scowls.

This is going to be bad.

He shrugs once, hefting the bookstrap hanging on his back, squaring his shoulders, and steps out from the relative safety of the shadow of the trees. The cold cast of the moon engulfs him as he starts up the hill, staring at his shoes as they bite into the slope of the grass, step after step.

The other boys scuttle to either side, opening the way for him like a gate, and he fills the newly formed gap in their circle. _Like a human to the battery-cage, as they say_.

He can see their faces now: In addition to Markus, there’s Kerim, and a couple of other boys whose names he doesn’t know. And Leonidas Boutet. Whose hands—thrust into the middle of the circle, presenting his burden—Emiel adamantly does _not_ look at.

Instead, he locks eyes with them all, trying to make his gaze knife-sharp.

“I think we should let Emiel do the honors,” Damiano DeLuz-Marroquin says airily. A lock of his champagne hair falls away from his brow as he tips his head to the side, taking Emiel’s measure. “He _can’t_ have done it before, right?”

“He’s a baby—what is he, forty-four?”

“Forty- _seven_ ,” Emiel snaps out, and it’s a trap, he knows it; they are trying to coax his ire from him, and he’s giving it to them like a gift. But what else can he do?

_(Tell me what that is._

_The sigil of Ammurun. A knife in the dark._

_And that?_

_The Tdet. The serpent released._

_And **that?** What is that, boy?)_

“Big boy!” Daimaino sneers. (What bollocks—the prat is only fifty himself if he’s a day.) “So grown up. Think he ought have a go. What you say, Godefroy? Fancy a blackbird?”

Leonidas smiles, all teeth, and shoves his hands toward Emiel again; he looks down at what the mousy-haired brat is holding, a reflex.

Its wings are twisted, one pulled distressingly far forward and one pinioned crookedly behind its back. The feathers lining them—black, reflecting teals and purples—are a mess, pointing at odd angles, some of the shafts bent back or snapped entirely.

It trembles, shudders. One of its feet twitches.

Its head is bent down, beak curving slightly toward the white feathers of its chest, stained red with its own heart’s blood.

Gods, the _smell_ of it.

He presses his lips together, hard. He doesn’t even _want_ it, but his mouth is watering all the same.

Emiel screws up his face in an expression trying very hard to be disdain. “It’s a _magpie_.”

Kerim releases a single loud bark of surprised laughter. “Such a _scholar_.”

Apparently inspired, Markus, hovering at his left, snatches the bound books from off his back. “Well, he’d have to be, wouldn’t he? To remember such a damned long name—” He twists the volumes wrapped in the strap, trying to get a look at the titles on the spines. “What is this shit?”

Emiel twists, grasping at the books, trying to recover them, but Markus mists out of his reach while Kerim claps a hand on his shoulder, holding him. Emiel shakes him off defiantly, but doesn’t make a move toward either boy, merely stilling himself, taking slow, measured breaths.

“Favor us, Emiel,” Daimaino says, tagging the phrase with Emiel’s name again, teasing him on. “Show us how it’s done.”

Emiel’s claws extend fractionally while he squeezes his hands into a fist, restraining himself; he’s going to draw his own blood soon, and wouldn’t that be appropriate?

He has to tread carefully here.

_(Tell me what it is._

_The hand of Gharasham._

_Not a lot of people understand what it means. What do **they** think it means?_

_That the open palm is weakness. That the blood there has been drawn by an enemy.)_

“Aww, it’s his first time, isn’t it?”

“Kill it, Emiel. Go on. Take it.”

_(What does it **really** mean?_

_We drew the blood from the hand ourselves. It’s a commitment, a promise. There’s nothing we won’t sacrifice in pursuit of our honor. It means… It means we don’t start fights. We finish them. Sir.)_

Leonidas pushes the bird forward again, this time up and nearly into Emiel's face. Emiel clenches his jaw and cranes his neck back but doesn't look away.

He could take the creature now, consume it, lull them into a false sense of security. It's not a bad tactic: he could act blood drunk, and they think so little of him they'd probably believe it. He could use what they don't know about his consumption entirely to his advantage. If they are stupid enough to underestimate him—his family, his tribe—they deserve what's coming to them.

The magpie shudders, harder now, feathers hitting him in the face as it beats a frantic death throe.

The others laugh.

He feels something inside him snap, give way.

He grabs the broken creature from Leonidas's hands, and crushes its windpipe in his own before tossing it savagely on the ground behind him.

They all move at once. Kerim snarls, face shifting, fangs protruding. Markus, abandoning his ill-gotten prize, shoves Emiel in the back, knocking him forward into Leonidas. But Emiel is ready, claws tearing into the other boy's shirtfront, catching him. Twisting as he falls, Emiel uses the momentum of the push to take them both down.

Leonidas scrambles to push away from Emiel, right himself, stuffing his bloodied palms in Emiel’s face, driving the heel of his hand painfully into Emiel’s jaw. But even with Daimaino’s help, Leo doesn’t manage to move away before Emiel slashes at him, leaving a wicked gash in his left cheek.

Leonidas screams.

Emiel is breathing too hard, sitting up too fast, too busy preparing the next wave of attacks to smile.

But he thinks about it.

In the uproar, none of them notices it at first: a red cloud of smoke, so dark it’s nearly black, circling them.

Emiel sees it before the others, glancing up as he gets feet under him, stumbling backward.

Dai and Kerim are lunging at him, claws extended, when the shape materializes in front of them, blocking their path to Emiel. Peeking around the tall, black-clad and black-haired figure, Emiel watches them skitter to a halt, narrowly avoiding colliding with the newest entrant into the fray.

Emiel can’t see the young man’s face, but he doesn’t need to.

“ _Stop_ this foolishness,” Dettlaff orders, voice dark and laced with menace. “ _All_ of you.”

Dai’s eyes are wide, two blue orbs looking even rounder and shinier in the moon’s glow. Kerim looks much the same. Leonidas winces, holding his face (that little shit; the wound is probably healed already). The boys whose names Emiel doesn’t know have already fled, first sprinting, then misting, for the edge of the wood. Dettlaff remarks their departure impassively.

“D-Dettlaff,” Daimaino stutters. “We were just—”

“I don’t _care_. The humans celebrate the savaed in three days time. The village is not far away. If they stumble through here in the midst of this _idiocy_ —”

Dettlaff whirls toward him, then, and Emiel can see the lines of anger carved into his pale face. He hasn’t transformed into his true shape, but nonetheless, he is stunningly imposing. Even wearing his human face, Dettlaff has a dignity about him, a rather grim, stony nature that makes him appear much more mature than his nearly seventy years of age. His broad cheekbones, his piercing blue eyes, the sharp cut of his jaw… Emiel finds himself circling back to the same words to describe him again and again: he’s terrifyingly handsome.

Emiel has only seen him in passing since his family arrived here at the foot of the Blue Mountains. They’ve barely been formally introduced, have spoken no more than a few words of greeting to one another before this moment.

It seems unlikely their relationship will be improving in the immediate future.

“Fighting one another,” Dettlaff scolds him. “Your own _kind_. What were you thinking?”

“They’re _vampires_ , perhaps,” Emiel scoffs in a tone drier than the Korath, “but I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘ _my kind_ ’—”

“ _Silence_ ,” Dettlaff snarls, eyes flashing, and Emiel quiets himself as if mesmerized to do so.

The older vampire twists back to face Emiel’s tormentors once again. “Your sister is Emiel’s age, Daimaino. Would you have _her_ shown such discourtesy? Would you torment her so?”

“I—I didn’t—”

“Leonidas,” Dettlaff continues, talking over Daimaino’s feeble attempt at a reply. “Stop clutching your face so, you’re not as hurt as all that.”

The younger boy glowers at Emiel, but does as he is asked, removing his hand to reveal smooth skin on his cheek.

Emiel straightens his shoulders and smirks a bit at that.

“Go home,” Dettlaff tells them. “Now.”

Looking crestfallen, Daimaino points at Emiel. “But he—!”

“ _I_ will deal with him,” Dettlaff promises.

Emiel swallows.

“Leave us,” Dettlaff tells the others again, in a voice that makes it clear he will not be repeating himself further.

Dai, Kerim, Markus and Leonidas all look at one another, then scan the clearing, confirming they are not being watched. Their bodies fade and twist, changing into blue and brown tinged clouds of mist before darting away.

Drawing himself up to his full height—admittedly, less impressive standing beside Dettlaff, who stands several inches taller than him—Emiel fixes his countenance into a grim stare, waiting for the older vampire to give him a verbal lashing.

Detlaff says nothing, however. Which is probably worse.

“I didn’t _need_ your assistance,” Emiel says irritably, breaking the silence.

“I see,” Dettlaff says. “You had the situation well in hand, then.”

“I’d have been _fine_. I can’t just—” Exhaling his frustration, Emiel shakes his head. “I’m supposed to _finish_ —”

Dettlaff stares in confusion. “Finish what? The bird?” he waves toward the corpse as he passes it. He crosses to retrieve Emiel’s books, lying where they had fallen on the ground. “It’s dead already,” he observes dryly, handing the tomes back to the younger boy.

“ _No_ —” Emiel snaps, snatching the books away, growing more infuriated by the second at Dettlaff’s seeming obliviousness. He feels as though _he’s_ the one doling out punishment.

“Don’t you _see?_ ” he demands, over articulating in his exasperation. “They aren’t going to _stop_ —If they think I can’t take care myself—and if I don’t—”

“They are fools,” Dettlaff says dismissively.

Emiel envies him the cool remoteness of his demeanor, he really does. But right now it just makes Emiel all the more livid.

“Don’t let them push you into your first blood,” Dettlaff tells him with something that—if Emiel was in a cooler frame of mind—might be taken for tenderness.

Now, though, with his thoughts jumbled, twisted up in his own irascibility, the sentiment smothers him, sticky with condescension. Emiel lunges, pressing into Dettlaff’s space. His eyes are shiny and hard, shadowed by his furrowed brow. He hisses at Dettlaff: “It’s _not_ my first.”

Dettlaff doesn’t move, just observes. After a moment, he asks quietly. “Have you killed?”

 _Shit._ Is this is a trap, just like with the other boys?

Does he… know? Suspect?

( _Drink this, boy, it’s good for you._ )

He can’t lie. And if he says the truth—that he hasn’t killed—then Dettlaff will guess, will know where it came from, and—what will he think?—

( _You godsdamn little pansy, **drink** already—_ )

“No,” Emiel tells him, and he feels like he’s putting his life in Dettlaff’s hands.

If Dettlaff is surprised or concerned, or even finds this to be a revelation at all, there’s no betrayal of it in his face. He remains silent.

“I have to be able to do _anything_ —” the words pour out of Emiel’s mouth, like some part of him has been cracked open and he’s unable to stop their escape. He squeezes the leather strap around his stack of books like it’s all that’s keeping him from falling into an abyss.

“I have to—I’m _Gharasham_ ,” he says at last. As if that explains it. As if that sums up the feeling of anguish, of searing inadequacy he constantly feels.

But oddly enough, that _does_ seem to clarify the situation for Dettlaff. He lifts his head slightly, the shadows on his face changing shape.

“As am I,” he says softly. “I was born in the land of the blue roses.”

“Near the Ammel Mountains,” Emiel says, immediately awash with relief. “Not far from Tesham Mutna.”

He doesn’t really remember it, the place his family comes from, can’t quite bring himself to think of it as ‘home’. He remembers shouting, and his father coming home covered in blood, and their departure not long afterward. His family hasn’t stayed in one place for long since then. The past several years here, in what the humans called Kaedwen, have been quiet. So far.

The others are mostly of the tribe of Ammurun here, sneering and decadent; they don’t understand… well, anything.

But maybe… maybe Dettlaff could.

“Then you know,” Emiel tries. “You _must_ know that—”

A calming hand settles on his shoulder, light in comparison to the weight of the gaze Dettlaff levels at him.

“It is a bad path to tread, Emiel,” he says, a warning. “Fighting other vampires. No matter what you think they deserve.”

Emiel glares at him, and shrugs away from Detlaff’s touch as if the gesture burns him.

It’s not as though he has _no_ sense of right and wrong. It’s not as though he’s talking about _humans_.

“Do you even know what it’s like?” Emiel asks, voice canting up. “ _Hmm?_ To be harassed? _No_ ,” he scoffs. “Too busy with your bruxae, I imagine.”

Dettlaff’s proclivities for the lesser species are well known to him—to everyone in the community, for that matter. It’s considered unusual, perhaps a slight social faux pas, especially here amongst the Blue Mountain dwellers. But the sheer raw power Dettlaff expresses in his command of their distant cousins earns him a modicum of respect from their peers nonetheless.

Emiel hadn’t considered before that it might be a kind of retreat: a way of making fear look powerful.

No, Dettlaff doesn’t—can’t be _bothered_ to understand what it’s like for Emiel.

He’s alone. As always.

He stalks off down the hill.

“Wait,” Dettlaff calls after him.

“Thank you for your concern,” Emiel yells, neither slowing nor turning back. “Now, with all due respect, please kindly go and _fuck_ yourself.”

He dematerializes into cords of grey smoke just before he hits the treeline.

* * *

Maybe the humans were onto something, with their funny celebrations, their strange ways of marking time. Indulging in a little… _vice_ around the savaeds.

He licks his lips. They feel… strange.

He should have…fucking… He should have done this sooner. Fuck. Ha.

It had made him sick, when his father had first made him try it. It stung his throat and made his eyes water and his father had yelled but he _swore_ he wasn’t crying on purpose and he wondered why he couldn’t handle it, the very thing they were _made_ for (so his father said). What was wrong with him? That it hurt him, that it made him cry? Why was he... _wrong_... like that?

But this time was different. He had done it for himself this time. Not for his father, and not for those other little pricks who had taunted him a three nights ago.

He was older, now—a little older, anyway—and it had gone down easier the first sip.

And a _lot_ easier all the sips after that.

He’d—

—fuck, gods, his head is buzzy, and his fingers feel heavy, but the rest of him feels light, how does _that_ make sense?—

—it’s like his head is floating off his shoulders—

 _—ah, fuck_ , don’t drop the— _thing_ —

He’s got it. It’s fine.

 _An_ yway.

He’d mesmerized the dog, a big one, a wolfhound. No one had been by the barn, no humans at home at all, they were all at their bonfire—and it’d surrendered to him so easily, it didn’t even make a noise when he’d bitten into it.

The… goat and the pig were messier, despite having less fur. He should have gone slower. But. It was all right.

They tasted… thin and bitter, compared to whatever his father had given him, but that was… probably fine. It was easier, anyway. He was allowed to have things to be easy sometimes. Wasn’t he?

And then he’d been walking toward the cliffside, and found it. Found the thing. He couldn’t _believe_ his luck.

It’s squirming in his arms again.

He wishes he could mist, but… he’d probably drop it, then, and that would defeat the whole purpose.

He’s almost to the keep, anyway, and that’s where the others said Dettlaff had gone. It’s not much further now.

(His skin is hot. Is it hot? It feels hot.)

He stumbles up the pathway—it’s tricky, actually; he understands why humans avoid it, and why his kind tend to fly there. But he’s listening to the night sounds and it’s peaceful and he focuses on taking one step at a time and not falling, and it’s not so very long before he approaches the massive white stone archway.

It looks like someone… frowning somehow. It doesn’t have a _face_ exactly, he can’t quite explain why it makes him think that. It just looks _angry_. Or no, not even angry. Just… dour. He didn’t know the Aen Seidhe built things that were so, well, passionless.

A piercing cry comes from the bundle in arms, the shrill sound sending a shudder through him. He shushes it, considers hypnotizing it. He’s not even sure it would work. It’s so damn… _small_.

Its eyes are so tiny, and barely open.

He presses it to his chest, trying to drown out the sound, and gods, its little heartbeat is _so_ fast, and it’s so warm, even having been left in the cold autumn air for so long. (The other humans can’t have meant it to survive—it gets so fucking _cold_ in this part of the world.)

It stops crying after a moment. Thank the gods.

Having made his way through the gatehouse and across the courtyard, he wanders into the main keep, his shuffling steps echoing off the stone walls. The thought smacks into him, then, as if he’d been struck in the head with a rock: he has no idea where Dettlaff might be _within_ the fortress.

He hadn’t thought that far ahead, hadn’t counted on the fact that he wouldn’t be able to fly. Maybe he could just... put his surprise down for a moment to go look. Place it on the floor, and—

Before he can glance around the massive stone great hall to find a place to rest his burden, she’s on him in an instant, mouth distended, shrieking, fire-red hair flying about her face as she dives for him. It catches him off-guard, he staggers backward—

—the thing in his arms cries again—

Dettlaff emerges from behind a stone column, putting a hand up to stop the alp advancing on him.

“Zola, stop it, what—” Dettlaff frowns. “ _Emiel?_ What are you—?”

“ _Dettlaff_ ,” Emiel says stupidly, his voice somehow gone breathy. Oh, gods. Why did he think this was a good idea?

Dettlaff takes several paces in his direction, when his gaze falls on the cloth bundle in Emiel’s arms. He stops dead in his tracks.

“Oh, Emiel,” he sighs. “What have you _done?_ ”

Emiel holds out his arms, presenting his gift, and feels—well— _stupid_ —he wishes he could think of another word—his brain is so _fuzzy_ — _where did all the words go?_ —but he _does_ feel stupid—

“I just thought—” he stammers, blundering into the dead-end of a fragmented thought. “I found this—the humans left it in a willower’s ring, and—and I thought—before it got too cold, we might—if you wanted to share—”

Dettlaff finishes moving toward him, stands beside him. Gently, he reaches down and adjusts the cloth wrapped around the creature Emiel is holding, so they can see its face properly, and they it regard together.

It’s tiny and pink and soft and sweet—probably no more than a few months old—it’s hard to say with humans; Emiel has studied them some, but not extensively. It’s young, though: practically larval.

And it smells absolutely _incredible_ —even his father’s private stash hadn’t smelled like this. He knows Dettlaff can smell it, too. It’s… something special, that much is clear.

He just wanted to share it with someone he liked.

Not that Dettlaff has any reason to like _him_ , not after how he behaved the other night. But perhaps it can be a peace offering, too.

“A willower’s ring?” Dettlaff repeats. “You swear it?”

Emiel nods vigorously—probably overly much—he can’t really tell, his head feels heavy, disconnected. Fuck.

“It was just sitting there,” he promises.

Dettlaff exhales and it sounds like relief. “All right. All right. It’s likely no one will—” he shakes his head, then turns to the alp again.

“Zola, I’m sorry. I need to speak with Emiel. Alone.”

She shoots Emiel a nasty look, but the alp retreats nonetheless, sloping toward the doorway at a human-like speed. She gives one last glance at the two higher vampires, then tears off into the night at a blinding pace.

Dettlaff regards him, face pinching, clearly experiencing some internal struggle.

 _What,_ Emiel thinks, _did I do wrong now?_

With a gentleness Emiel has never observed in him before, Dettlaff takes the human babe from him… and wraps its swaddling more tightly around it, cushioning its head before setting it on the ground.

“You— _we_ ,” he clarifies, “should put this back where you found it.”

“ _What?_ ” That’s… That’s, well. _Mystifying_. “Why?”

“I… am somewhat uninformed in such matters,” Dettlaff admits. “But. I believe its parents must have thought it a changeling child.”

Emiel closes his eyes, shakes his head. He doesn’t think it’s the blood clouding his brain—or, well, he _does,_ and it _is_. But he’s not sure he’d understand Dettlaff’s words any better if he was sober.

“ _Fools_. All the more reason to—”

“They expect their _own_ child to return. Or at least for this one to disappear. They do not expect to find the body drained and discarded.”

Emiel draws a deep breath and looks at the infant.

“Do you really care so much about this… _thing?_ ” he demands, pointing at it.

Dettlaff reaches out, captures Emiel’s hand, covering it in his own, and only then does Emiel realize he had been trembling; he’s not sure when it started.

“No,” he tells Emiel, not releasing him, stilling the younger boy’s shaking in his firm grip. “I care about _you_.”

Emiel is deeply glad Dettlaff is holding onto him, then, even if it’s making his palms sweat, because he’s afraid he might fall over.

Dettlaff barely knows him. What does that even mean? How could he—

He _cares_ about him?

Dettlaff’s voice is quieter now. “Such a little thing, however sweet, won’t make you braver or older or better. Not in their eyes, and not in your own.” He doesn’t specify who ‘they’ are, but a few faces drift through Emiel’s mind when he says it. One in particular.

“And,” Dettlaff adds, “it could cause much more trouble than it’s worth.”

Readjusting his grip, he holds Emiel’s hand properly now. With… intent. Emiel squeezes back.

“Drinking humans, not drinking them: it’s irrelevant. They don’t matter. But _you_ do.”

Dettlaff’s hand is warm and soft in his, his blue eyed stare so intense, and so completely focused on him, and—

—it’s like he’s swept up in the tide, then, drawn on by something not quite him, something he can’t control.

He leans up and in, crossing inches that feel like miles, and kisses Dettlaff.

Dettlaff doesn’t move—his entire body tenses, in fact—and Emiel is on the point of pulling away— _one more thing he got wrong_ —

—when Dettlaff kisses him back, sliding a hand over the back of Emiel’s neck.

It’s a delicate thing, the kiss—neither boy is pushing, or tries to rush, both deciding to let it merely be what it is: a tender caress of lips on lips, and nothing more.

It feels… comforting. Safe. Even the fluttering in Emiel’s belly feels safe, though that doesn’t make any sense. It’s strange and new to him, but it feels like… an arrival of sorts. Like something he was meant to find.

It feels a little like home.

He’s not sure how it even happened—how it occurred to him to try. He’s not brave, can’t ever stop his whirring, chittering mind for long enough to decide to make himself so.

But the blood… the blood helped with that, didn’t it?

There’s a darker whisper in the back of his mind, one telling him that he could push this. He could drink just a bit more, and maybe Dettlaff would too, and they could—

Emiel opens his eyes, not pulling away, glancing through the dark toward the human babe, lying still on the stone tile, kissing Dettlaff all the while.

But then Dettlaff breaks the kiss, slowly looking down at him through half-lidded eyes

Emiel tucks his chin down immediately, ashamed. Gods. He’s an idiot.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” he apologizes, mumbling against the laces at the collar of Dettlaff’s shirt. “What I said to you. I’m _so_ sorry.”

He’s shaken by the gentle rumble of Dettlaff’s laugh as older boy puts his arms around him.

“It’s forgotten. But. You should watch your mouth. Not everyone would find you as amusing as I do.”

Emiel is starting to lose himself in hazy warmth of Dettlaff’s embrace. The tipsiness he feels is softer around the edges, but drowsiness is fast replacing it.

“I will… try to be more... mmm… _subtle_ next time,” he murmurs. It’s a fair bit of advice, but Emiel has no intention to stop telling people to sod off. He _has_ limits. He could be more clever about it, though.

“ _Emiel_ ,” Detlaff chides fondly.

He feels Dettlaff laugh again, the short burst of a reverberant bass note, and it’s like he’s been lit up inside.

 _He_ did that, he tries to tell himself. He made Dettlaff laugh. _Him_. Not the blood.

(He doesn’t quite believe it, but it’s enough. For now.)

He lets eyes dart to the side one more time, staring at the little bundle on the ground, then shuts them, running his tongue over his fang.

His voice is barely audible when he speaks again.

“It’s… Regis, please.”

“Mmm?” Dettlaff pulls back to look at him, letting slack into his embrace. He squints in confusion.

It hasn’t really been a conscious thought, not fully-formed, but he’s saying it aloud now all the same.

( _You’ve my fucking name, boy: you had better start acting like my son.)_

‘Emiel’ is an awful name, anyway.

“I’d like it if you’d call me ‘Regis’,” he asks again, a little louder this time.

Dettlaff studies him, and Emiel watches—no, _Regis_ watches—as skepticism transforms to resolution in his eyes.

Eventually, he nods, like the matter is settled.

“All right,” Dettlaff agrees, not asking a single question. “Regis, then.”

And oh gods, when Dettlaff says it, says his name, his _actual_ name, hearing it properly for the first time, it’s an epiphany: it’s not just two more syllables jumbled in a list of others. It’s someone speaking to him, asking _for_ him.

Regis rushes forward again, pressing a jubilant kiss against Dettlaff’s mouth, the most apt thank you he can think to offer—but Dettlaff pushes him away gently.

A fist seems to tighten around Regis’s heart— _he can’t stop fucking up, what was he thinking, he’s not someone new, this is pointless_ —

But Dettlaff is smiling at him. “Kiss me when you’ve gotten your bearings back, little king.”

“What?”

“If we are going to kiss,” Dettlaff explains, tracing the curve of Regis’s jaw lightly with a claw. “I’d much rather kiss _you_. Not what you’ve been drinking.”

Regis wants to protest, nearly does; he’s feeling much more grounded, but when Dettlaff pulls him into another hug, he nearly stumbles, and thinks better of arguing the point.

Dettlaff sniffs him.

“What is that? _Dog?_ Oh, Em— _Regis_. You,” Dettlaff teases him, “are going to feel awful tomorrow.”

“I feel awful _now_ ,” Regis grumbles, bringing a hand to his head, and Dettlaff chuckles again.

 _I feel awful always,_ he doesn’t say aloud.

But that’s not quite true. Emiel felt that way, perhaps. Regis doesn’t have to, though.

“You’re only twenty years older than me, you know,” Regis says, a little proudly and seemingly apropos of nothing. “That’s practically nothing.”

“I suppose that’s true. Or will be true. In time.”

Regis knows just what he means. For their kind, ages, even lifetimes, are so… soft. Changeable. Years can fly, and moments can stretch out indefinitely, and it’s hard to say when time will speed up or slow down for them.

He wants to stay here, in this place, in this moment, for just a bit longer, while they have the entirety of this ghostly structure all to themselves.

 _He called me little king,_ Regis thinks giddily. _And this is my castle._

Lazily, he looks down at the floor between their bodies, and allows his eyes to focus. It becomes clear what he had mistaken for some kind of irregular but intentional pattern in the floor is actually a trace of the past: the fossilized remains of some kind of animals. Impressions of long spines coil beneath his feet, and etched lines splay in patterns that suggest fins. Sea creatures, buoying him where he stands, their final resting place dry and cold.

The human infant makes a sort of shuddering, snuffling noise, then, and they both look in its direction.

“We should go,” Dettlaff tells him, sounding resigned, no more eager to leave than he is.

Peering down at the child, Regis contemplates it. Humans aren’t the oldest race on the continent, nor the sturdiest, nor the longest lived. How could something so… frail be so pervasive? Why were his kind so... afraid of them?

Or, were they moved by something other than fear?

“It’s going to die anyway,” Regis says. “Alone, in the cold.”

“Yes,” Dettlaff agrees, unperturbed, stating a fact. He bends and picks up the babe, holding it at arm’s length. It wails, its head looking unsteady on its neck. Almost involuntarily, Regis reaches out to steady, cupping his hand around the back of the tiny cranium.

Dettlaff throws him an inquisitive look, and then hands the child to Regis, who attempts to mimic the cradling motion of the few vampire mothers he’s seen, tucking it in the crook of his arm—which seems to be more comfortable for him and the babe, for whatever that’s worth. The little thing might as well have a _few_ nice moments, he supposes.

“It seems such a waste,” Regis muses. “It seems... _cruel_.”

Dettlaff half-smiles in surprise. “Are _you_ concerned for the humans now?”

“No. Not really. I don’t know,” Regis shrugs. “I don’t really understand them. They have such short lives anyway. Even when they _don’t_ kill one another.”

Dettlaff doesn’t answer, just motions to the door.

“Let me walk you home,” he offers.

 _Home._ With a word, every vein, every artery, every bit of blood traversing toward and away from Regis’s heart flashes fire, and then goes absolutely, violently cold.

It’s meant as a kindness, the suggestion, but Regis thinks of the house, the cozy little cage he returns to day after day: the people that no longer inhabit it and the one that still does.

( _Honestly, I wonder if you even **are** mine._ )

He skids to a halt, nearly trips.

“No,” he tells Dettlaff quietly.

His friend turns back, having walked on ahead several paces. He nods, and Regis thinks he understands.

“Well, let us walk to the circle at least. And we’ll see how close dawn is, then.”

The journey down the peak is almost more perilous than the one going up, but Regis isn’t quite as inebriated as he was then, either. He feels badly for making Dettlaff walk with him, but Dettlaff shows no signs of irritation or impatience, and they move carefully, without speaking, Regis still feeling a chill in his blood.

For a time, even the little human is quiet. It finally gives a soft whine as they move into a wooded grove.

Unconsciously, Regis pulls the thing closer in, hugging it to his chest.

( _Are you going to cry again?_ )

His voice is low, merciless as the mountain pass beneath their feet when he finally breaks the silence.

“Killing another of our kind,” he says. “Do you think it could ever be justified?”

Dettlaff squints. “I don’t understand.”

“If they were… cruel enough.”

“It’s not about justice. Or cruelty.” Dettlaff shrugs. “It’s about... safety. If one threatens the safety of us all—as a whole— _maybe_ the elders would deem it necessary.”

Pine and spruce thin and part before them as they continue, and Regis sees it, feels it, just as he did before: the circle of fungi sprouting up from the earth, and the prickle of magic in the air.

It’s a little sad in its irony: there probably _is_ a sylvan nearby, but Regis can’t conceive of an offering it would appreciate less than a mewling infant.

He places the baby on the ancient stump where he found it: its tantalizing scent is slightly diffused in the night air, but saliva still pools in his mouth as he looks at its exposed face and fingers one last time, its breathing shallow, skin gone ashen.

His fingers bend, curling slightly into the fabric before he draws his hands away and he must _still_ be drunk, because he feels somehow both voracious and protective when he finally lets the thing go, and that makes _no_ sense at all.

He feels almost as though he should say something, to the child, or for it, before they leave. But the moment passes, and he turns away. Dettlaff follows him.

“What if someone else did it?” Regis asks quietly.

“What?”

“If there was someone else who killed them,” he says, making it clear that he’s resumed his line of questioning from their walk down the hill. “Someone I could—someone that could... be hired, perhaps. Like a contract.”

Dettlaff pulls a face, as if Regis’s thoughts have stepped a little too far from being academic for his taste. “I doubt anyone would risk being declared anathema for any price.”

Regis can’t give it up, however.

“Not a vampire. A human. Humans enjoy coin. They can be bought, can they not? Or enthralled?”

Dettlaff laughs. It’s a touch disdainful, and for once Regis doesn’t take it personally: he knows how all of this sounds. It’s ridiculous.

He can practically imagine Dettlaff’s course of thought. A human could barely harm an ekimmara, let alone a bruxa or one of their kind. A single human? Even if they weren’t slaughtered in an instant, and by some miracle were physically victorious, a higher vampire could always regenerate.

But there was something so bright in that infant’s eyes, something powerful and unsettling, even as life slipped away from it.

There’s more to humans than he had previously imagined.

He decides, however, to keep that thought to himself.

“That’s… _Regis_.” Dettlaff shakes his head. “You are deeper in your blood than I thought. Come on, let’s walk a bit more.”

Regis looks back up the mountain a final time. Back up at the formidable, unnerving white stone towers of _Caer a'Muirehen_. The absurd fantasy he had earlier leaves him, tugged away with a gust of wind: it’s not his castle. It’s a dead place, built on bones and trapped ghosts of the sea, suspended there, cursed never to find true rest.

He can’t imagine a creature who’d want to call such a place home.

They walk on.

* * *

_ 1275 _

The soft sound of gears, and a jangling, meandering melody chiming out from the upper floor of the toy shop tells him Dettlaff has returned, probably having entered directly via a window; Regis glides upstairs to find him.

His friend leans over his desk, resting his weight on closed fists, head hanging down, deep in thought. The music box plays that same haunting, strangely familiar tune.

“You can show yourself,” he says roughly. “You aren’t fooling anyone.”

Regis does as his friend bids him, materializing before stepping up from the stairwell into the workshop, its carefully crafted dolls, wooden animals and tiny toy soldiers all looking on silently.

“That was never my intent,” Regis assures him.

Dettlaff doesn’t move from his pensive position. “As a very young vampire once told me, I didn’t need your assistance.”

“And, in the same way someone much wiser disavowed that little shit of such a notion, I’m here to tell you you’re wrong.”

Regis places a hand on Dettlaff’s shoulder, studying his profile. He looks weary. Which is troubling. Regis supposes if he could see his own face in a mirror, it’s an expression he’d know well in his own countenance. But it looks alien on Dettlaff’s features.

“Besides,” Regis adds tartly, “you’re not the only one vastly out of your depth.”

He’s seen a similar look on Geralt’s face these past few days, in the witcher’s struggle to comprehend the nuances of vampire thought and custom.

Regis wishes he could make them both see how damn similar to one another they are.

Dettlaff’s face works itself into a grim expression.

“Are you here of your own accord,” he asks, voice tight like a coiled serpent, “or on that _witcher’s_ behalf?”

 _Ah, yes_. Regis supposes that sympathy, understanding… perhaps those are lofty goals. But he hasn’t given up on a peaceful resolution, at least. Not yet.

“He and I are of a common mind.” He squeezes Dettlaff’s shoulder. “You should have come to me sooner.”

Dettlaff shakes his head, shifts his weight from side to side, restless.

“I didn’t wish to trouble you. You’re still recovering.”

He looks up finally, and discomforted as Regis was to observe the sadness in Dettlaff’s face, it’s nothing compared to the shock that overtakes Dettlaff when he spies the state Regis is in.

Regis’s chin is in Dettlaff’s hand, then, his blood-brother holding onto him fiercely, protectively, perhaps even _angrily_. Dettlaff examines his eyes, no doubt remarking the bright webs of scarlet encroaching at their edges, and the dark circles eroded into the skin just below them.

His life and his choices have taken their toll on his appearance for years now, but there’s no denying the trial at Tesham Mutna has made Regis look even worse than usual for the moment.

Dettlaff is… not pleased to see it. Certainly not any more than Geralt was.

“ _Emiel_ ,” he says, and suddenly Regis is all of forty-seven again. “What have you done?”

Regis raises his chin, defiant—every bit the little brother he feels he is—but doesn’t pull away. “Nothing I wouldn’t do again.”

A hundred times, a thousand times, he’d do it over again. Every moment of pain, he’d endure repeatedly—for _them_. He feels the same way about everything that happened at Stygga castle.

It’s his own personal interpretation of his tribe’s creed, he realizes. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do, wouldn’t be prepared to risk. Not for honor, or his blood family—but for his family of friends, _yes_. In a heartbeat, yes.

(If someone had told little Emiel that he was so surfeit of companions that he would run himself ragged keeping them safe—and keeping them from hurting one another—he would have thought that person mad indeed.)

“You are too weak for this behavior,” Dettlaff sighs. “And always so _dramatic_.”

 _You’re one to talk_ , Regis decides not to say.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he says, going so far as to roll his eyes. “You coddle me.”

Dettlaff releases his grasp on Regis’s chin, but only marginally, using his touch to draw Regis closer to him.

“That’s my right,” he tells Regis in a whisper, their faces so close that Regis feels the gentle exhalation of every word on his face when Dettlaff speaks. “I am _still_ twenty years older than you.”

It’s the closest Dettlaff has come to smiling since Regis entered the room.

Regis takes Dettlaff’s face in both his hands, thumbs caressing Dettlaff’s jaw.

“We _will_ get Rhena back,” he promises. His identity as a healer is etched as deeply into him as his identity as a vampire now, perhaps even moreso, and he says it because it’s very clearly what Dettlaff needs to hear: a kind of personalized anesthetic. The statement’s veracity is not a requirement for its effectiveness.

“I thought she was _dead_ , Regis,” Dettlaff confesses, the words coming out gruff and jagged. “Can you know what that’s like? To have that second chance?”

Regis doesn’t respond, merely lets himself think.

He thinks of golden cat’s eyes, gleaming in the darkness, gone wide. Of a pale pink mouth, lips parted slightly in shock. Of a stare of disbelief, of hope.

_Regis?! I… You all right?_

He _doesn’t_ know what it’s like, not first hand. But he’s seen it in another’s face, the emotion echoed back to him: perhaps the closest thing he’s ever had to a reflection. It was... 

Well.

It was a lot to take in.

Detlaff releases Regis, pacing away, then back: prowling, thinking on his feet.

“And the witcher. He will assist in this?”

“Tracking down and assisting women in distress is something of a raison d'etre for him. I met him when he was doing just that. He’s rather… conventional, I suppose. In _that_ regard.” _Not in others_ , Regis thinks, but refrains from voicing that bit aloud.

Anyway, it’s not as though Regis can stand on ceremony himself while eschewing Geralt’s particular breed of heroism as trite; he _does_ live in a graveyard, after all.

“He’ll simply let us… leave?” Dettlaff asks, sounding doubtful.

“I don’t know _exactly_ what he’ll ask of you, but knowing Geralt…” Regis grips the strap of his bag resolutely, and nods, vouching for his friend. “Yes. In the end, he’ll leave you alone, as long as the killings stop.”

Dettlaff nods, frowning, as if trying to deconstruct the idea of a witcher who has malleable requirements for killing vampires, and coming up short.

Well, that’s all right. Dettlaff doesn’t have to trust Geralt himself. He only has to trust _Regis_ , and they can all make it through this misadventure mostly intact.

“His medallion,” Dettlaff remarks, thoughtful. “Did you see it? He is one of the Wolves of the Sea Keep. Funny, is it not?”

Regis doesn’t answer.

 _Funny_ isn’t the word he’d use, exactly.

And per Dettlaff’s more than three-centuries old advice, he _does_ watch what he says now. Quite closely, in fact.

He has done more than see Geralt’s medallion, of course.

He has felt it tremble in the dark at Fort Armeria, as he released the witcher from his bonds, Geralt telling him it would be best if their paths never crossed again.

He’s watched it dance on the witcher’s neck, as Geralt deflected volley after volley of arrow fire from his precarious stance on their raft in the middle of the Yaruga only weeks later.

He’s noticed several things about Geralt he’s withheld from Dettlaff.

His friendship with the witcher has never been a secret, per se. It’s simply difficult to sum up in a way that would have any meaning for his friend.

Dettlaff’s careful orbit around humankind has charted closer and further away from them at varying times, but his complete indifference to their fate as a whole has remained largely constant.

Well, except for Rhena.

Who is a rather outsized exception indeed.

Regis quashes a rogue thought that perhaps he hasn’t spoken to Dettlaff of Geralt not because Dettlaff wouldn’t understand, but because he _would_.

He is saved from his own labyrinthine thoughts by an insistent rapping on the workshop window.

Both he and Dettlaff look toward the sound’s source. Regis opens the window latch to regard to the raven sitting on the sill, looking back at the two vampires.

It waits, obediently, becalmed by Regis’s force of will only. It gives off a slight scent of fear, though, and its leg trembles where it stands. Regis pulls in the information he needs from the bird’s mind as quickly as he can and releases it from its obligation. It flies off like a shot into the fading sunlight.

He turns to Dettlaff.

“It seems,” Regis informs him, “we have a party to attend.”

**Author's Note:**

> [ms-mothball](https://ms-mothball.tumblr.com/) created the [loveliest art for this fic which made my heart so happy, check it out here!](https://ms-mothball.tumblr.com/post/171767905263/inspired-by-magpie-a-tw3-fanfic-written-by)
> 
>  
> 
> I tried to work roughly with the [Witcher wiki timeline](http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline), notably:
> 
> \- Regis was born in the year 840.
> 
> \- The first witchers were created around 950 by mages Alzur and Cosimo Malaspina.
> 
> This story [has a blog post if you'd like to share it](http://asparrowsfall.tumblr.com/post/166797127337/fic-magpie-regisdettlaff-t-77k-words). Comments and kudos are love, reblogs are life!


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